John Brookes

Brookes’ early sketches, in particular,
underline his belief that the garden should be an extension of the home reflecting
the demands of modern life. The middle class could not afford the high
maintenance gardens of the Edwardian Age and earlier tradition, nor did they
have the room for them but they could have beautifully designed gardens with
stylish furniture and useful features such as play spaces and barbeques. 

He used new shapes, simpler structures, and inspiration from architecture and modern artists such as Ben Nicholson, Piet Mondrian, and Henri Matisse. Through collaborations with architects he introduced structure and geometry; from the iconic courtyard of Penguin Books inspired by the paintings of Piet Mondrian to the ‘sexy curves’ of spaces inspired by his Brazilian hero, Burle-Marx.

As a student in 1950s Britain, he recalls, a garden was a place to show off an immaculate lawn, prize chrysanthemums and grow vegetables. One or two deckchairs aside, it was not a place used for outdoor living. It was reading Thomas Church’s 'Gardens are for People' which opened Brookes’ eyes to gardens as a place for a modern lifestyle with patios, pools and barbecues and not just the sweat of horticulture.

Brookes was an early pioneer in the Modernist approach to gardens. This was typified by his belief as written in his 2018 book ‘A Landscape Legacy ‘ that ‘One needed to consider the purpose of the garden first and only then think about its design, so that lifestyle, architecture and garden were a harmonious whole. It seems obvious now, but in 1960s Britain, this was almost heresy’


In 1962 Brookes was the first independent designer to create an exhibition at the Chelsea Flower Show. His garden presented an outdoor living space rather than showcasing plants, which was a new concept at the time. Although controversial, he won the Flora sliver medal. He went on to create seven more gardens at Chelsea, winning four gold medals and two slivers.

“We had been fed a diet of gracious living and country houses,” he recalls, with ordinary gardeners in the shadow of the grand names of gardening. Why couldn’t everyone have their garden designed? In 1967 while working as a landscape consultant for ‘House Beautiful’, Brookes designed small gardens for £1, “whether you’ve just acquired a desert or a jungle, landscape designer John Brookes will provide an easy to follow scheme.”

Brookes was passionate about gardens of all sizes. He had begun his professional career working with Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe on primarily large parks and some small gardens. However, after four years with the practice, he left to set up his own practice which focused primarily on private gardens. He ‘wanted to show that design is the starting point, particularly in small gardens, as they need a lot of thought.’

Like much of Brookes work, this is a garden of geometric forms. The construction and planting which formed this had to be able to withstand Chicago’s extremely cold winters. The footings for walls, steps, buildings and other structures where far more extensive than those in the milder climate Brookes had worked before.

For the planting, Brooke’s sourced English apple trees to create the ‘the bones of the garden’, and a high yew hedge. Some of plants he would have liked to use were not hardly enough for Chicago however he substituted them with others that would give a similar effect. He applied his learnings here to future projects in Poland and Russia.

Brookes developed ‘the Grid’ method where he would use ‘a grid as a way of imposing discipline’. As part of this process he often uses an architectural feature on the building as a starting point for the shapes and proportions in his design. The garden becomes less formal with the shapes become smaller and sparser further away from the house, allowing it to blend with its surroundings.

At The Old Rectory he used the nine meter wide recess bay, seen here where door A is marked, to guide the proportions for the terraces and other features.

The upper terraces have gravel gardens planted with some of Brookes' favourite species such as Euphorbia Characias Subsp. Wulfenii which is a hardy plant that needs sun and well draining soil.

Brookes lived in Tehran, Iran, from 1977 to 1979 where he set up and worked as the director of the Inchbald school of Interior design. Subsequently he went to India and researched Mughal gardens. Both these experiences as well as his trips to Spain resulted in his 1987 book ‘The Gardens of Paradise’ which explores Islamic gardens.

The owners had also previously lived in Iran and relished in the sound of flowing water in gardens there. Knowing this Brookes created a water feature that extended for 16 meters on the terrace closest to the house. The feature had a square upper pool that flowed into a larger lower pool by a rill. In his 2002 book 'Garden Masterclass' Brookes writes that the water garden here was ‘inspired by Islamic examples and those I have seen in Moorish Spain’.

His idea for the client was to create a traditional rose-covered pergola by the house and then divide the slope into a series of gardens planted in an English style. This was challenging as Brookes had to source plants normally unavailable in Japan and the Yamadas needed to find gardeners who understood how to maintain an English- style garden.

The garden was a success with Brookes saying ‘If the temperature and humidity of pure mountain air had not hinted at the exotic nature of the location, I could have been standing in a garden in Kent or Hampshire back here in the UK’. The garden is now owned by the families children, Kei and Eric, and remains open to the public. It is well known as, according to Brookes description, Miss Kei is ‘somewhat a celebrity in Japan’.